Long distance business class - why certain routes and not others?

[BBoy]

And then viewliner ll coach cars and lounge cars to uniform the consists.

 

[jis]

And then viewliner ll coach cars and lounge cars to uniform the consists.

It is very unlikely that there will be any more unique one off design Viewliner II cars. The new cars replacing Amfleet II will most likely be based on off the shelf Siemens Venture car shells and trucks. It is just way cheaper to do it that way.

 

[joelkfla]

Seems like Siemens pretty much owns the North American passenger railcar market.

 

[John819]

Having a sole source supplier has a lot of advantages (assuming that it is competent). So expect that over the next 10 years all Amtrak equipment (except for the Acela IIs) will be Siemens products. Perhaps the Viewliners will be kept on the Florida and New Orleans routes.

 

[rs9]

While long-distance seats will necessarily need more recline, perhaps the Midwest Venture business class seats will offer a clue of a future order. According to the article, the seats have 26" width with 39" pitch. Business class seats increase from 18 in the current cafe/business Amfleet I cars to 36 in the Venture cars. Presumably these seats are still part of a cafe car, but that isn't made clear.

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-rev...ook-siemens-venture-coaches-debut-for-amtrak/

 

[jis]

While long-distance seats will necessarily need more recline, perhaps the Midwest Venture business class seats will offer a clue of a future order. According to the article, the seats have 26" width with 39" pitch. Business class seats increase from 18 in the current cafe/business Amfleet I cars to 36 in the Venture cars. Presumably these seats are still part of a cafe car, but that isn't made clear.

The last detailed order summary that I saw said that married pairs will be Coach-Cafe and Coach-Biz. So no, Business Class won't be in the Cafe car.

 

[crescent-zephyr]

Having a sole source supplier has a lot of advantages (assuming that it is competent). So expect that over the next 10 years all Amtrak equipment (except for the Acela IIs) will be Siemens products. Perhaps the Viewliners will be kept on the Florida and New Orleans routes.

Having competent maintenance departments would be a bigger advantage in my opinion.

 

[west point]

Single source of rail cars has advantages when total inventory is small. However, what happens if all equipment has a defect grounding all equipment from that one builder. Now once (?) Amtrak can go to say 2000 cars then a second vendor is just good practice.

Remember what happened to the Acela-1s